Mel and Martin share experiences of fostering Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children

Read Mel and Martin's video transcript

Mel: Every child deserves to feel safe. And if we can help a child feel safe, even for a day, God, how lucky are we that we have that privilege?

Martin: And I guess they're the reasons why you do it, you know, because you want to make a difference to the life of a young person.

Martin: When we considered about doing UASC (unaccompanied asylum seeking children) placements as part of our fostering journey, to me, it was a bit of a no brainer. I think sometimes we just live with our blinkers on all the time. We're very safe in the world that we've created for ourselves. So actually to be able to step outside of that and provide something for somebody else. You know. why wouldn't you do it?

Mel: I am so glad that we have had 18 foster children. Four of them have been UASC, which is unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. Our first UASC, was a young man who was from the Congo. He was sent across to the UK for schooling, and basically he was left stranded here soon after a family breakdown, and he ended up here, and he lived with us for four years. He obviously came from a very strict kind of background. And so for him, it was very much coming into a kind of a loving family. And so the contrast of their previous world and this world they're now in can be quite significant.

Mel: He is now at university, you know, just starting his third year. He lived with us for four years, and I'm so proud of him.

We've had two from Eritrea, where there's a horrific war going on. Their family wanted them. They didn't want them to join the army. They wanted them safe.

Martin:You're trying to do the best for these young people, and it changes you as a person. It's changed me in terms of my world views.

Mel: In Eritrean culture, it's really important that you have freshly ground coffee. And so she taught me how to grind the beans down, and we bought an Eritrean coffee set so that she just felt it's something silly, but if it makes a child feel safe and welcomed, it means the world.

I actually got to speak to one of our UASC children's mums. Their neighbor had a mobile phone in the village, and I could hear how relieved she was that her child was safe. And she just kept saying, 'Thank you, thank you'. And then our foster daughter was trying to translate what mum was saying, and I can't explain how emotional that was.

Mel:We had a young man from Afghanistan, who'd had really quite a traumatic time. His dad was killed by the Taliban, and his mum managed to get one of his brothers out. There's no electricity in the village. He doesn't know if his mum's okay. It's a really difficult lesson to realise actually what a lot of children around the world are having to deal with through no fault of their own. And of course, naturally, their parents want their children to be safe. They make them leave.

I can't imagine what trauma they have seen and lived that they didn't ask for. These children haven't asked for their countries to have war. They haven't asked for any of that. And what their families have done is they have made them leave for their own safety.

When we knew he was coming, we got an Afghan cookbook, and so I, I looked through the cookbook, and one of the main ingredients for a lot of Afghan food is something, I think, called Four spice and it's about six spices that you dry fry, and then you crush with a pestle and mortar, and the smell is amazing.

And I thought, I want this young man to come into the house and that smell to be in the house, that he feels that okay. These people are safe. They want me to be here. They are welcoming me. And I made some Afghan food. I tried to make Afghan bread, but I absolutely ruined it. But a few days later, he showed me how to make it properly. I did it completely wrong.

Martin: He got embedded in the local cricket team. They looked after him as well, you know. And he was a very, very good bowler. I remember the first time I took him to cricket training. He let one fly down the nets, and I could just see people going, 'Oh, okay, yeah'.

Mel: They absolutely embraced him. They all clubbed together. They bought him the whole kit, the bag, everything.

Martin:And whilst he was with us, we realised that the Afghan cricket team were playing Ireland. And so what we did is we went on holiday to Northern Ireland that summer, and we actually took him to two of the T20 games that Afghanistan were playing against Ireland.  You know and I think for him, that kind of, like, just meant so much.

Mel:  We're nothing special. We don't speak Tigrinya, we don't speak Pashto, you know, we don't speak Congolese. But what is universal? The language of care and love is universal.

Martin: We've just wanted to provide somewhere, a safe space for these young people.

Mel: And so it doesn't matter if you don't speak those languages, the fact that you've opened up your home to that child and you want them to feel welcome and safe. That transcends words, that transcends language.